Mapping the dynamics of medical informatics: a bibliometric analysis of the scientific field

Abstract

Digital health is an emerging topic in academic forums, public policies, and healthcare organizations. Assuming that digital health derives from previous medical informatics knowledge, this work presents findings from a bibliometric study on medical informatics technological and conceptual evolution in the last decades, emphasizing methodological aspects. We performed a bibliometric analysis in metadata from 100,000 papers indexed under the category ‘medical informatics’ in the Web of Science database between 1960 and 2020. Longitudinal analysis using software Bibliometrix and CorText were conducted in three axes: frequency of items, authors’ countries, and keywords. Based on the methodological hypothesis guiding the study, the changes in keywords over time offer a proxy view on the conceptual and technological changes in the medical informatics research field. The results show that medical informatics consistently grew over the last six decades, expanding to several countries. Conceptual and technological changes that emerged from the keyword analysis supported the identification of well delimited periods related to general labels, such as: ‘health informatics’ and ‘e-health’. The ‘medical informatics’ is recurring as a general label due to international scientific associations’ adoption since the early 1970s. Moreover, in the last five years, we could identify the term ‘digital health’, which will probably be a major label in the next decade. The keyword analysis also showed the association between labels and technological changes, adding more evidence that these changes are related to concepts and technological applications.